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Biographies
Source:
History of Cleveland and its Environs
The Heart of
New Connecticut
Publ. The Lewis Publishing Company
Chicago and New
York
1918
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H. A. Everett |
HENRY
A. EVERETT. It is for his
pioneer work in the construction and financing of electric
public utilities that the late Henry A. Everett, who died
at Pasadena, California, Apr. 10, 1917, will be longest
remembered both at Cleveland and elsewhere in the United States.
Mr. Everett was identified with the construction
and operation of various electric railways in Ohio, and he
exemplified a special genius in the upbuilding of such
properties and particularly in the management of the financial
problems involved.
Mr. Everett was born at Cleveland Oct.
16, 1856, and was only sixty years of age when he died.
His parents were Dr. Azariah and Emily (Burnham) Everett.
His father was not only a physician but is remembered as the
president of the first street railway in Northern Ohio.
Henry A. Everett secured his education in the
public and private schools of Cleveland. At an early age
he turned his attention to business affairs, and soon became
identified with the pioneer efforts at electric traction, and
was a promoter, constructor and operator of electric railways
and in various other industries in which electricity is the
basic principle. He organized and financed a number of
independent telephone companies and was identified with electric
lighting corporations in many cities.
For many years he was associated with E. W. Moore.
The Everett-Moore syndicate became financially
involved in December, 1901, with total debts approximating
$17,000,000. Cleveland and Ohio banks and the large
railway supply houses were the principal creditors. The
properties of the syndicate constituted an aggregate value of
$100,000,000. It required three years to liquidate the
debt. The manner in which the difficulties were solved has
been considered one of the greatest pieces of financial
engineering in the history of Cleveland, and a large share of
the credit has always been given to Henry A. Everett.
Mr. Everett was vice president while
Mr. Moore was president of the Lake Shore Electric
and the Cleveland, Painesville & Eastern Railway companies, in
addition to active financial connections with many other
electric traction companies throughout this country and Canada.
He was also president of the Northern Ohio Traction & Light
Company and of the London Street Railway Company of London,
Ontario. A few months before his death a syndicate of New
York bankers acquired control of the Northern Ohio Traction &
Light Company, and as under the new management most of the old
employes were thrown out of work, Mr. Everett gave
one of many instances of his magnificent philanthropy by
establishing a private pension to take care of his faithful
subordinates. It is said that more than one Cleveland
fortune is the result of Everett's friendship. He
was known to let all of his favored assistants into his
confidence, and those who remained faithful to him were sharers
in his good fortune.
For some time Mr. Everett was chairman of
the board of the Detroit United Railroads of Detroit, Michigan.
He built the Detroit Railway in 1895 and 1896 with the
assistance of his friends and Mayor Pingree.
It was the first three cent fare city railroad in the United
States.
Socially he was a member of the Union Club, the Century
Club, the Colonial Club and the Electric Club. In 1886 he
married at Cleveland Josephine Pettengill.
They became the parents of three children : Leolyn Louise,
now Mrs. Spelman of New York City; a son who died
in infancy, and Dorothy Burnham. Mrs.
Everett is now living at Willoughby, Ohio, where Mr.
Everett some years ago erected a beautiful home.
Source: History of Cleveland and its Environs - The Heart of New
Connecticut - Publ. The Lewis Publishing Company - Chicago and
New York - 1918 - Page 508 - Vol. |
S. T. Everett |
SYLVESTER THOMAS EVERETT,
retired and enjoying the calm dignity of fourscore years, has
been a conspicuous figure in Cleveland's financial, business,
political and civic affairs for half a century. His life
constitutes a big chapter of American business and finance, and
it is possible here to indicate and suggest rather than describe
the many experiences and influences that have radiated from his
career.
He was born in Liberty Township, Trumbull County, Ohio,
Nov. 27, 1838. For several generations his people lived in
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. His father, Samuel Everett,
a native of that county, came to Trumbull County, Ohio, when a
small boy with his parents in 1797. Ohio was still a
territory, and in a district that was almost, completely
isolated from the rest of the nation he exercised in due course
an initiative and enterprise that made him one of the successful
men of his time. He was a farmer and also constructed and
operated the first linseed oil mill west of Pittsburgh. He
was also a manufacturer of soda, pearl ash and soap and other
commodities. Samuel Everett married Miss
Sarah Von Pheil, who was born in Bucks County,
Pennsylvania. Her father, Henry Von Pheil.
came to America from Prussia about 1798.
The power that enabled Sylvester T. Everett to
carry weighty responsibilities through more than half a century
was derived partly from a hardy ancestry and also from the
wholesome environment of the country during his youth. He
had the training and experience of a farmer's son. In
1850, at the age of twelve, he came to Cleveland to live with
his brother Dr. Henry Everett. After a year in the
public schools he went to work as general utility boy in the dry
goods house of S. Raymond & Company. A year later
he formed his first banking connection as messenger boy and
collection clerk with the house of Brockway, Wason,
Everett & Company. An older brother was a member of
that house. Three years later he was promoted to assistant
cashier, and doubtless was one of the youngest men to have those
responsibilities in the history of Ohio banking. In 1858
he assisted his uncle, Charles Everett, a
prominent merchant, in closing up a business at Philadelphia,
and remained there until 1860, when he was recalled and entered
the banking institution again. In 1864 he was made
superintendent of one of the largest oil properties in the Oil
Creek district of Pennsylvania, known as the McClintockville
Petroleum Company, having been called by the firm.
Mr. Everett returned to Cleveland in 1868
as manager of the banking house of Everett, Weddell
& Company, after the retirement of Mr. Wason from
the firm. In May, 1876, he became vice president and
general manager of the Second National Bank of Cleveland, which
was one of the few banks of that time capitalized at a million
dollars. In January, 1877, he was elected president and
remained at its head until 1882, when the bank was liquidated by
limitation of its charter. He then founded the National
Bank of Commerce, with a capital of one and a half million
dollars, and was its first president. He resigned to
become identified with the organization of the Union National
Bank and was largely instrumental in making that one of the
leading financial institutions of Ohio. Mr.
Everett continued active as a banker until 1891, when he
retired from the active management of the bank, but remained a
director for a number of years until 1900. He also served
as a director of the Citizens Savings & Trust Company for many
years, and is still connected with that institution, which
absorbed both the National Bank of Commerce and the Union
National Bank, both of which were originally organized by Mr.
Everett. The Citizens Savings & Trust Company is
today the largest banking concern between New York and Chicago.
As a financier and business man Mr. Everett
deserves credit as one of the pioneers in promoting
electric railway construction in the United States.
He promoted, financed and built at Akron the first successful
electric street railway in the world. He also promoted and
financed the Erie Pennsylvania Electric Company of Erie,
Pennsylvania. He was the chief promoter and vice president
and treasurer
of the Valley Railway, personally carrying it for six years
after the financial troubles following the panic of 1873, and
then reorganizing the company in 1879 and later selling it to
the Baltimore & Ohio. This road subsequently became the
Cleveland Terminal and Valley Railway Company. Mr.
Everett was formerly a director of the Cleveland Rolling
Mill Company, the Little Consolidated Street Railway Company and
the Cleveland Railway Company. Among his other business
interests are mining properties in North Carolina, Wisconsin and
Michigan, and both mining and ranching properties in Colorado.
Mr. Everett has been associated on terms
of intimacy with the foremost men of affairs of Ohio and the
nation, and particularly with the leaders of the republican
party of the nation and state during the last half century.
In April, 1869, he was elected city treasurer of Cleveland,
being one of the two republicans elected to office that year.
He was re-elected and served seven consecutive terms, fourteen
years. Several times he was given almost the entire vote
of both parties, and four times was nominee of both parties, and
for several terms was almost the only republican officeholder in
the city administration. Cleveland municipal finances owes
him a big debt for his introduction of a better system of
accounting and for putting the city 's credit on a sound basis.
Mr. Everett was a member of five of the Cleveland
Sinking Fund Commission from 1878 until this commission
liquidated by expiration of charter in 1912. This was one
of the most important trusts that could be conferred by the
city.
Mr. Everett was an alternate
delegate-at-large from the state of Ohio to the National
Convention at Philadelphia of 1872 when General Grant
was nominated for a second term. He was a delegate to the
convention of 1880 which nominated his intimate friend Gen.
James A. Garfield, by whom he was afterward appointed United
States Government director. He was a presidential elector
in 1888, and with the Ohio delegation cast a solid vote for
Gen. Benjamin Harrison. He was also delegate to
the St. Louis Convention of 1896 when William McKinley
was nominated.
Mr. Everett was one of the founders and charter
members of the Union Club and its first treasurer, and of which
he is still a member. He is also a member of the Country,
Roadside and Mayfield Clubs, the Manhattan, Lawyers, and New
York Clubs of New York City, the Automobile Club of America of
New York, and the Blooming Grove Hunting and Fishing Club of
Pike County, Pennsylvania. The Everett city home is
one of the finest on Euclid Avenue, and the family also have
country homes at Engadine Farms in Transylvania County, North
Carolina, and near Bonanza in Colorado. His well earned
leisure Mr. Everett has employed in extensive
travel, both in America and abroad, and his Cleveland home has
long been known to art lovers for the collections that his taste
has assembled. This home has entertained many prominent guests,
including eminent Americans, governors of various states, great
financiers, such as J. P. Morgan and Andrew
Carnegie, railroad men, bankers and others.
In January, 1860, Mr. Everett married
Miss Mary M. Everett, daughter of Charles and Catherine
(Evans) Everett, of Philadelphia. She died in October,
1876. They had four children: Holmes
Marshall, Catherine Evans, Margaret
Worrell and Ellen.
On Oct. 22, 1879, Mr. Everett married
Alice Louisa Wade, daughter of Randall P. and Anna R. (McGaw)
Wade, a sister of J. H. Wade and granddaughter of
Jeptha H. Wade, founder of Wade Park and one of
Cleveland's most prominent early business men. Jeptha
Wade is remembered as the pioneer in the construction and
operation of telegraph systems in the Middle West, and was one
of the founders of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and for
many years actively associated with that corporation.
Mrs. Everett was born in Cleveland Jan. 1, 1859, and
spent all her life in the city. She died at her home, 4111
Euclid Avenue, Feb. 12, 1916. Her many wholesome interests
included an active part in local philanthropy. She was a
worker in behalf of the Cleveland Protestant Orphanage and one
of its trustees and was especially devoted to children's
charities. Mrs. Everett was survived by four
children, a son, Randall W. Everett, who graduated from
Yale University in 1903 and is now a resident of Engadine Farms.
North Carolina; and by three daughters, Mrs. J. G. Sholes
of Cleveland, and Anna Ruth and Esther, who live
at the family home. The third child of Mr. and Mrs.
Everett was Sylvester Homer Everett, who died in
Cleveland in 1912 at the age of twenty-eight. He was a
graduate of Yale University and was a young man of many rare
gifts of character and personality.
Source: History of Cleveland and its Environs - The Heart of New
Connecticut - Publ. The Lewis Publishing Company - Chicago and
New York - 1918 - Page 174 - Vol. 3 |
NOTES: |
